Discover the Top Cybersecurity Frameworks for 2023

Being a part of the hyper-connected world that we live in today involves using digital devices and generating data commonly. The essential nature of those digital technologies means they need to be secured to make sure privacy and protection from people who find themselves willing to steal and compromise data for nefarious purposes.

In response to the growing threat of attacks from malicious actors trying to compromise data security and other critical infrastructure, cybersecurity experts have devised guidelines to detect and reply to these threats. These guidelines form the premise for what the industry refers to as cybersecurity frameworks.

A cybersecurity framework is a set of standards, guidelines, and procedures put together by a body of execs to assist organizations understand and manage their exposure to cybersecurity risk. These frameworks are an important tool for those trying to design or refine their security policies according to industry best practices.

Individuals or organizations that attempt to secure their digital assets by relying solely on their capabilities can quickly turn out to be overwhelmed with defining an appropriate and effective response to each threat. Nevertheless, with the assistance of one in all the highest cybersecurity frameworks built on the cumulative experience of several industry experts, IT managers can simplify this monumental task. 

Similar to a typical framework is supposed to be a foundation or support system, the very best security framework is presupposed to give you a reliable strategy to construct out your cybersecurity program.

The first goal of most cybersecurity frameworks is to enhance the industry’s resilience to cyber attacks. They achieve this by helping even probably the most minor organizations implement robust security controls by leveraging the framework guidelines. The experts involved in creating these standards would typically be out of the reach of smaller firms, however the framework makes it possible for everybody to learn from their expertise. 

One other purpose for cybersecurity frameworks is to assist these entities achieve regulatory compliance. As a direct results of the increasing rate of data breaches involving business and private data, regulatory bodies from several sectors have developed information security laws that organizations under their jurisdiction must meet. While these rules may vary between industries, they’re almost all the time based on cybersecurity frameworks. 

A wonderful example of that is the Latest York Department of Financial Services 23 NYCRR Part 500, a body of cybersecurity regulations for financial services firms built on the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) Cybersecurity Framework.

Now that we understand the importance of cybersecurity frameworks, listed here are the highest five frameworks to think about on your organization in 2023:

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a non-regulatory body with a mission to advertise American innovation and industrial competitiveness, was tasked by the president in 2013 to develop “a framework for reducing cyber risks to critical infrastructure.” The results of this collaborative effort by government and industry experts was the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF), first issued in 2014 and revised in 2023 to satisfy modern cybersecurity standards.

The NIST Framework’s primary objective is to assist organizations develop a consistent and iterative approach to identifying, assessing, and managing their cybersecurity risk. The critical infrastructure it’s meant to guard could be controlled by public or private sector organizations of various sizes, complexity, and technical competence. Due to this fact, NIST designed the framework to be applicable no matter these aspects.

One other advantage of the approach used to develop this framework is that it’s technology-neutral in its application. As a substitute, it makes use of universally applicable terminology to assist IT managers do the next:

• Describe their current cybersecurity posture.
• Describe their cybersecurity goals.
• Discover and prioritize opportunities for improvement.
• Assess progress toward their cybersecurity goals.
• Communicate cybersecurity risk to internal and external stakeholders.

This broad approach to securely managing risk makes the NIST security framework the very best start line for organizations in any sector trying to safeguard their infrastructure. 

You’ll be able to access the framework documents from the NIST website to start on this path.

The Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a chunk of United States laws that standardizes how healthcare organizations handle information. As information technology began to play a more outstanding role within the industry, this regulation evolved to incorporate the HIPAA Security Rule. This rule requires healthcare providers and businesses to keep up the confidentiality, integrity, and security of electronically protected healthcare information (ePHI).

• Administrative Safeguards in the shape of policies and procedures that show how an entity will comply with the act.
• Physical Safeguards that provide physical access control to protected data.
• Technical Safeguards to guard the hardware and software systems that process, store, and transmit protected data.

For organizations within the healthcare sector that manage personally identifiable information (PII), compliance with the HIPAA Security Rule is mandatory.

In case you operate within the financial services industry and what you are promoting involves handling cardholder information, then you need to know concerning the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS). The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) put together this framework in response to the growing variety of bank card data breaches.

Entities that accept or process payment cards and wish to comply with the PCI-DSS framework must meet these six control objectives:

• Construct and maintain a secure network and systems.
• Protect cardholder data.
• Maintain a vulnerability management program.
• Implement strong access control measures.
• Usually monitor and test networks.
• Maintain an information security policy.

The quantity of online transactions is slowly outpacing physical transactions making compliance with this framework mandatory for organizations that need to move their payment operations businesses online. 

The PCI SSC has an important library of resources to learn more concerning the framework and its requirements.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is a non-governmental body answerable for developing globally recognized technical standards for all the things from manufacturing to social responsibility. Based on the broad scope of their duties, you possibly can make sure that they’ve standards for cybersecurity.

The ISO/IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) 27001 and ISO 27002 standards belong to the much broader ISO 27000 series of standards that take care of information security. ISO 27001 covers the necessities for designing, implementing, maintaining, and repeatedly improving an information security management system (ISMS). ISO 27002, then again, outlines the knowledge security standards and practices that organizations can implement with an ISMS.

Much like the NIST CSF, the ISO frameworks apply to organizations of every type and sizes. They involve analyzing a corporation’s information security requirements based on the next aspects:

• An assessment of organizational risk to discover threats, level of vulnerability to them, and the likelihood of occurrence in addition to their potential impact.
• The legal and contractual obligations a corporation has to satisfy.
• The interior processes, procedures, and business requirements for information management a corporation uses for its operations.

This evaluation will determine the suitable information security controls to deploy an information security management system that works for the entity. 

Documentation for the 27001 and 27002 frameworks is obtainable online.

The Center for Web Security (CIS) developed its Critical Security Controls framework by applying a crowdsourcing model to discover probably the most prevalent cyber threats and define security measures to guard against them.

Probably the most recent version of this framework, CIS Controls Version 8 (as of May 2021), consolidates these safeguards into eighteen control groups based on activities reasonably than devices, technologies, or people. 

A few of these activities include: 

Over time, the framework became more accessible by sorting the safeguards for every CIS Control into Implementation Groups based on a corporation’s level of technical competence and available resources. This level of detail ensures which you could apply the suitable security measures to your IT infrastructure despite your level of experience. 

For organizations that need secure webhosting to satisfy their compliance requirements for any of the frameworks above, look no further than Liquid Web. We’ve got a broad number of Security and Compliance Add-Ons to satisfy your needs and over a decade of experience satisfying customers’ webhosting expectations. Contact us to start today.